When Research Meets Practice: Doctoral Voices on Co-Construction Across European Welfare Contexts
Article by: Clara Mariné, Lisarb Montes D’Oco, Marco Lupoli, Priya Benny, Rita Luís, Celia Consolini
As the first year of our PhD wrapped up, six of us came together to share opportunities, challenges and ethical reflections which arised during our first months in COCOSO. It was Clara who suggested we submit a proposal for the 24th European Network for Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet) Conference, to present our experiences of the industrial PhD. At the initial stage of the project, Carolina Reiners contributed to the discussions and to the abstract submission. Celia Consolini joined the project at a later stage, during the redaction of the paper.
As a result, we jointly authored a paper which we titled « When Research Meets Practice: Doctoral Voices on Co-Construction Across European Welfare Contexts ». Together, we reflected on co-construction across different welfare contexts, as well as the opportunities and challenges raised by COCOSO’s industrial format.
We explored the literature around the strengths of industrial doctoral programmes and introduced COCOSO, the first network of its kind to focus on co-construction as a key dimension of democracy and innovation in social welfare. We delved into the value of knowledge exchange between academia and practice, and challenges around governance and institutional expectations. In addition, we critically examined principles of co-construction in research and what it means in an industrial PhD context, and we questioned whose knowledge is heard in evidence-based research. The last section of the paper gathers individual reflections from each of us around our experience as doctoral candidates within an industrial PhD focused on co-construction.
At the conference, held at the Lisbon School of Economics & Management (ISEG) from August 26 to 28, four of us – Priya, Rita, Clara and Lisarb – presented the paper in a stream focused around “Policy Engagement, Knowledge Exchange, and Impact: Strengthening Evidence-Based Social Policy Research”. Our methodological contribution received interest from the audience who could relate to the challenges and opportunities we explored in the paper.
This first collective contribution offered us a precious space to reflect on our experiences of COCOSO, connect with one another and deepen our understanding of the literature around co-construction and evidence-based research. It also reminded us of the value of being part of a doctoral network, where never have to walk alone through the challenges we face.
Below is the abstract of our article:
Driven by the growing demand for meaningful participation in social services, there is an opening for evidence-based research to consider which voices are being heard and what types of evidence might best inform policy and the delivery of social services. The COCOSO Project (Co-construction in the field of social welfare) was created to address this, focusing on participation and co-construction as key dimensions of democracy and innovation in social welfare. Launched in 2025, COCOSO is the first Marie Skłodowska-Curie industrial doctoral network to address these issues, bringing together six European universities and sixteen partners from public and non-governmental sectors. Its industrial format ensures that research is conducted both within academia and directly at the sites where social services are delivered (public and social sectors).
This submission presents a collective reflection from six early-stage doctoral candidates of the COCOSO network conducting research across four European welfare states (Portugal, Poland, France, and Spain). While individual projects draw on different methodological approaches, we share a common commitment to participatory research, grounded in the principles of co-construction and in close engagement with the actors involved in social welfare. Working across institutions and national contexts, COCOSO researchers engage with contexts and institutional landscapes shaped by different, and sometimes conflicting epistemological paradigms. Engaging in transnational and transcontextual learning and knowledge production, as well as being embedded in context-bound organisations across Europe, provides a critical perspective on how evidence-based knowledge is synthesised across diverse cultural and institutional landscapes.
Drawing on our lived experiences within this industrial doctoral framework, we aim to explore the opportunities and tensions of working with one foot in academia and one in practice. The contribution combines theoretical and practice-based reflections on interdisciplinary work, epistemic justice, participation, and social justice in social welfare contexts. This reflection also examines how international industrial doctoral programmes can support new forms of knowledge exchange, while also revealing structural challenges related to governance arrangements, institutional expectations, and power relations in welfare systems.
The presentation will take the form of a collective, multi-voice reflection based on our situated experiences across different welfare contexts. Rather than aiming to present unified findings, we want to open up a space for discussion around how co-construction can be negotiated in practice, including both its possibilities and its limits. Bringing together insights from different institutional and national settings, we aim to share a more grounded perspective on how participatory approaches are shaped by existing power relations, organisational constraints, and everyday research realities. In this sense, we approach industrial doctoral networks not only as training environments, but as spaces that can help connect research, practice, evidence-based knowledge, and broader processes of social impact and transformation within welfare systems.
